Wall of Whiteness

by Andy Davis / 02.08.2011

In modern day Mzanzia, entrepreneurialism is the dominant ideology. Our developmental masterplan. The capitalist mantra to lift ourselves out of poverty by our bootstraps, not waiting for handouts or government interventions. To this end, “promoting entrepreneurialism” has become something of a buzzword at the big financial institutions and has recently spawned an Entrepreneur’s Guide over at Old Mutual, pity then that the big green machine couldn’t find more than two black entrepreneurs to profile. Way to represent the zeitgeist of the not so new South Africa… Eish.

Now I hate to be the guy doing the pencil test, but seriously when only two of the 37 profiled entrepreneurs are black Africans it just leaves you to wonder how Old Mutual intend “connecting with the people” and inspiring entrepreneurial activity on a grass roots level when most of the “role models” dishing out their sage advice are the melanin shy descendents of settlers. Hell, it makes you wonder what South Africa Old Mutual operates in. It’s an entrepreneur’s guide for the moneyed by the moneyed in the spirit of making more money. A howler. A horrific own goal by one of the biggest corporate citizens in the country. At worst it’s racialised and patronising. At best it’s horribly misguided. Regardless of the intention behind the site, this kind of sloppy, misrepresentative branded content just reinforces the old Julius Malema chestnut that whites still control the economy (and largely we do) and that we need to be punished for enjoying the privileged positions we occupy thanks to the collective sins of our parents. Because we sure as hell aren’t getting the message and working towards a more inclusive and equitable future. A better life for all, as it were. Qantas flight QF64 direct to Sydney now boarding at gate C.

Unsurprisingly, a scan through the website credits shows a team defined by white, Anglo-Saxon surnames. But, fuckit, it’s not like this is deep geek or advanced science here. They could have just googled “black female entrepreneur”. And the end result is that because of the lack of representation amongst Old Mutual’s role model entrepreneurs, most of the people who would benefit most from the extensive and well researched guide probably won’t even get exposed to it.

And seriously, who needs the entrepreneurialism masterclass here? The Northern suburbs kid recently belched from the bosom of private school education with a university degree all lined up or the township youth, still smarting from years of shitty schools teaching Outcomes Based Education?

And yet, it’s not like the country has a shortage of inspirational black entrepreneurs. Fuck the BEE crowd, I doubt many of those bum in the butter fatcats would know how to start a business if the keys to the financial citadel hadn’t fallen into their laps circa 1994’s glut of guilt inspired wealth redistribution and the subsequent boomtown of the window-dressing years… And I’m not talking about Mama Jackie here either. But you could start with bonafide old school entrepreneurs like Nthato Motlana and the dark prince of Soweto KFC franchises, Jomo Sono. Or go contemporary by checking in on South Africa’s number 1 knocksman, DJ Sbu. Or keep it fashionable with the likes David Tlale, Craig Native and Themba “Darkie” Mngomezulu. And if you’re looking for women, look no further than Vie Arem or Milisuthando Bongela. They could go check out what David Kau, Kagiso Lediga and Loyiso Gola are doing trying to make their comedy routines pay properly. Go literal with Ntone Edjabe and his Chimurenga. Hell, do a profile on DJ Dimples and that brazen swagfest Pop Bottles. Find out how film makers Khalo Mathabane and Dumisani Phakati fund their increasingly big budget movies? And, as distasteful as it may seem, even Kahnyi Mbau and Nonhle Thema could stake a claim as entrepreneurs worthy of a profile.

And while Old Mutual may not know what a black diamond looks like, they sure as hell know how profitable a blood diamond can be. Remember, they still own a 16% stake in the ZANU PF linked mining company currently digging the “contested” Marange diamond fields in Zimbabwe.

But what did we expect? The Mean Green Financial Machine can’t even get the window dressing on their own PR website right. It would be nice if the anachronistic old life assurance company (started in the settler heyday of 1845 by a Scottish entrepreneur) tried to live up to their fancy new pay off line and actually “did great things”. Because seriously dudes, Juju is coming.

Overall I agree with what you are saying – not enough black entrepreneurs are represented let alone exist – but I have to point out a couple of things that I think you have missed or glossed over in your write up here…

First – I counted a total of 7 non white South Africans on the list, yes this number is VERY low but I think you were being a bit sensationalist in saying there were only two black entrepreneurs showcased – which is true but you fail to point to the 2 indian and 3 coloureds represented – do they not also fall into the ‘previously disadvantaged’ grouping?

Secondly – If you take a look at the types of business these people on the list have started most of them (over 90%) are technology related business. Now im not defending the tech industry but it is obvious that you are going to find a lower number of previously disadvantaged people in this field. Believe me I work in the tech industry and know how hard it is (even if you wanted to) to find skilled black people who work in the tech field – this is something that we need to fix and if you read some of the profiles you would have noticed that allot of what of the entrepreneurs listed put a heck of an effort in trying to change this – they even say this in their interviews!

Thirdly – As much as we harp on about the need for more entrepreneurs and especially black entrepreneurs in SA the fact remains that it is bloody hard to start a business and most black people are set on chasing the traditional jobs that their parents want them to hold down – i.e. the ones where you are ‘seen to have made it’ – Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers etc – Those that do move into business want to work for a bank or big corporate because thats where all the benefits (medical aid etc) lie…

Lastly – you say these people on the list are ‘moneyed’ and you may be right in some cases, but i have to point out that I know some of these fine entrepreneurs and can tell you for a fact that there are at least 10 people on that list who I know for a FACT started with nothing – some of them kicked off the business that they are running while still in university with no help from parents, outside funders etc and have grown their business through smart thinking and hard work… and when I say hard work I mean it, these dudes on average work 12-14 hour days (again another reason why you don’t find many back people becoming entrepreneurs – you work harder for less pay, take more of a risk and don’t have any of the benefits of a big corporate)

So like I said – I agree with you. There are not enough black entrepreneurs represented on the list and on top of that there are not enough black entrepreneurs in SA full stop – I just think the reasons as to why warrant a little more investigation rather than a sensationalist gloss over like the piece above sometimes felt like….

And that list of inspirational black entrepreneurs? Eish indeed, so badly researched. Try comparing apples with apples. This is really shocking journalism and pretty sloppy writing too. Your little heart does seem to be in the right place but shame….

This is probably one of the best things I’ve seen up on Mahala in a long time. There are a few flaws in your argument, but you make some strong points and put them across well. Sure, a lot of people are going to be unhappy with what your saying, but you’ve generated a healthy debate over some proper issues. Good to see.

It’s gonna be a some time before there are equal number of white entrepreneurs as previously disadvantaged ones. Just because black people run the country/politics, it doesn’t mean that the majority of them immediately know how to run a corporation or start a business.

Although more and more blacks are (very) slowly getting better and better education, the majority of whites have always had it. More whites come out of tertiary knowing how to manipulate the financial system to their benefit, unlike blacks (and this can be attributed to a lot of things, some of which @dan pointed out).

Blacks will bitch because the transition is taking too long, and a black person has to work too hard, and the whites own the money which they’re not about to let go. Whites will bitch because getting an education is so “easy” and don’t understand why blacks can’t do it, and “my white dad is not a millionaire, so we’re not rich and don’t own this money everyone talks about” mentality.
This type of debate could go on forever, but that’s my 1c.

My company, Cognician, was the primary content developer on the Entrepreneurs’ Guide and I thought I should set a few things straight. Firstly, I echo everything that Dan said above. I don’t feel the need to reiterate any of his points, which are all spot on, not least the fact that I wasn’t able to include enough black tech entrepreneurs. I’d like to explain this. But first, a little background…

It’s a miracle that this project happened at all. Big companies like Old Mutual don’t make gestures like this. It is only through the nimble actions of some highly entrepreneurial employees at Old Mutual that the project was green-lighted, rather than being buried in red tape. From a standing start, fuelled only by a small discretionary budget, our multi-company team managed to produce all the elements that make up the guide in under seven months. For a project of this size, which is dependent upon the inputs of so many people, over such a wide area, that’s pretty fast.

As you pointed out, Andy, the Guide is well researched. In fact, it is a world class resource for entrepreneurs, which will be used for years to come to help founders get their companies off the ground. As a resource, all members of the production team are thrilled with how it turned out, although we can’t wait to make improvements. As a showcase of entrepreneurial talent, however, we would love to have been more representative. So why weren’t we?

The primary reason is that we chose to focus initially on tech companies. This is because the Guide is a digital product, which is consumed online. In order for it to be successful and show real traction with users, it was necessary to focus on the tech space, where there is a ready and waiting community of entrepreneurs who are hungry for learning and guidance. It has always been Old Mutual’s intention to expand the Guide into other areas of business – and these plans are currently in the works – but the beach head was tech. As Dan has already pointed out, the tech community is not a highly representative one. You need only visit any of the major tech conferences around the country to realise that women and dark faces are in short supply. But surely I could have found a few more, you say?

Well, the short answer is that I tried and I failed. I had a number of other prospects lined up, from an unfortunately small pool of suitable candidates, but all of them were unable to participate during the first phase of the project. Some were travelling, others were simply too busy. And every time I looked at the wall of whiteness, as you call it, Andy, I knew that the day would come when I’d have to respond to a post like yours.

Believe me, there are many people who I wish I could have included. But the bottom line is that I looked for entrepreneurs on the basis of quality, not colour. The notion that melanin is the key requirement in connecting an eager learner with valuable knowledge is itself racist, patronising and misguided.

You can’t hide from the fact that the guide only profiles 2 blacks, 2 indian and 3 coloured entrepreneurs vs 30 white. That’s awful. Julius Malema and the YL would have a field day with those stats. #ReactionaryWhiteAgenda

The tech community is not representative… but you should have done better. Just last week we ran a story about Mdu Ntuli, a groundbreaking, self-funded 2d animator you can expect big things from. Surely he would have qualified for your tech spec. Or what about Tau Morena who created the first black amateur porn site in SA and currently enjoys 2 million impressions a month from User Generated Content? I thought I made this point pretty clearly in the story, but here goes again, the Entrepreneur’s Guide needs to represent if it’s going to fulfill it’s function as a resource for South African entrepreneurs – and paint Old Mutual as a responsible corporate citizen working towards creating a more equitable and functional South Africa.

Why focus on tech if the industry is poorly representative? I mean this is an entrepreneur’s guide and entrepreneurship encompasses every field. I’m sorry, I just don’t buy the tech beach head theory… There are loads of role models to choose from that would have delivered better traction. You telling me that the Guide wouldn’t have achieved more press with a profile on DJ Sbu, Nonhle Thema or Khanyi Mbau with their legion of responsive Twitter followers? That’s just naive.

I guess the issue is this. The Old Mutual Entrepreneur’s Guide reflects a clositered white South African world view which simply lends credence to the debates and agendas being spearheaded on the political stage. Claiming that we’re post-racial and meritocratic when we’re quite obviously still hobbled by the past, is disingenuous.

In my eyes Old Mutual already have a bad reputation for their ongoing investment in the Marange diamond fields. This “PR” project just entrenches it. My perception is that Old Mutual is about making money at any cost and serving the moneyed to make more money – it’s not about helping poor black entrepreneurs work their way out of poverty and 400 years of structural inequality. Whether that’s their intention, or just a coincidence, doesn’t actually matter. The point is that we live in an inequitable society. And white people, who are the most enabled, are happy to dick-ride on the good times in the first world bubble of suburbia (as represented so succinctly on the Guide) and run when shit goes bad without engaging with the people or the issues on the ground. And that just gives more power to the populist rantings of Juju and co. Primarily because they’re right… Privilege always protects itself.

@Andy – Saying OM should have done more, to give off the impression/facade that there are more black tech entrepreneurs than there actually are, misses the point for me.

How does that benefit anyone in the grand scheme of things? A better angle would have been to ask WHY there aren’t more entrepreneurs available to profile and HOW to address that.

In closing, its amazing the racism that goes on here on mahala’s comments section. Now white people are an experts on why black people struggle to make it in business and the reasoning is that black people are lazy, expect handouts and bitch? Really? Its bigots like these (along with malema, steve hofmeyer etc) that really ruin this country.

Nazareth… I agree with you… I was bemused that OM couldn’t get their window dressing right – and didn’t mean to fudge the issue here. My point is that there are plenty of black entrepreneurs to profile. Yes more work needs to be done to improve the representativity of the tech industry in SA so that black entrepreneurs to profile become self evident… And one needs to ask the WHY and show the HOW… and it would be cool if OM got involved in doing just that…

Thanks for your comment on the Entrepreneur’s Guide. I must say I’m still a Mahala fan (even though we tend to be on the satirical receiving end of your posts). I must also admit to not having an intriguing reply to your vivid portrayal of corporate machinations.

At the heart of it we simply set out to capture start-up knowledge and make it freely available. There certainly wasn’t an intention to marginalise. We chose to begin with the local tech community because they’re digitally more accessible, would provide our best opportunity to acquire the platform’s base content, and precisely because it’s an area in which SA has a significant skill shortage. In phase 2 of the project the intention is to expand into other industries, and it’d be great to feature some of the entrepreneurs you’ve mentioned.

I do agree, though, that access to an online guide would prove impossible to many aspiring entrepreneurs without the means. To fill the gap we further funded a series of entrepreneurial workshops, as well as the Netprophet Conference – which affords free access to 1000 delegates each year.

@Andy – Unfortunately, the points you bring up are very idealistic and will never work. This is South Africa and if you think white business (and the general population) at large is ready to let black people in on the action then I think you need to have a serious re-think about your views.

Unfortunately, as much as I try to be an optimistic person in my thinking, I don’t see white South Africa EVER acknowledging the damage apartheid has done to the black population financially, socially etc let alone to reverse its effects.

So in closing, I would rather the true completion of the economic landscape be reflected as is and not in the rainbow nation rhetoric/facade that got us into this kak.

I don’t see how these comments help the situation at all. I also don’t see OM as the only option and feel that there are other ways of becoming a successful entrepreneur, regardless of what your colour is.

It’s unfortunate to think that 17 years into this so called democracy, the “blame” ( i say that in quotations as people like to use this word often) however always falls on the white man, So to expect a white person to give up his hard earned wealth, is ludicrous.
And if not, is it something you would expect a black person to do as well if you are living in a so called “democracy”? (hence the quotations)

A very interesting article but i personally believe this is just a shit stirrer to create a bigger divide yet again amongst black and white when there are more important issues to adress, this article in itself could be viewed as racist from both black and white…

People are people, some expect pity, other do not, some expect hand outs, others believe in hard work.

As Nazareth says, the white’s may not ever acknowledge the damage caused by apartheid, but is that the point of this article? the underlying tone? it seems so.

In my opinion it comes down to hiring the people with the best possible determintation and skill assets to complete an effective job WHICH IN TURNS, creates a better economy for PDI’s and all racial groups, for that matter to enjoy.

Jack thanks for wading in. For those who don’t know, Jack Kruger is the head of digital at Old Mutual. And I appreciate the opportunity to address my issues to those responsible. In short, I believe the Entrepreneur’s Guide is a good initiative but the roll out (first phase) was ill conceived and a bit lazy and ended up working against Old Mutual instead of doing good PR work on your behalf. The reasons are pretty clearly laid out above.

The concept of “economic freedom” is the central issue of modern South Africa. It’s been 17 years since liberation and the majority of South Africans remain continuously disadvantaged and excluded from the economy. And because the dominant global paradigm is capitalism, entrepreneurialism is the tool that’s supposed to emancipate the people. But it’s a deeply contested space. And while it’s all good and well to claim that it’s racist and patronising to break things down to race, it’s also deeply racist and patronising to pretend that the playing field is level and everyone has access – without addressing the structural inequalities that continue to exclude. If OM wants this Entrepreneur’s Guide to have a major impact as a resource then it needs to be positioned and curated properly and directed at the real issues and not just a self congratulatory backslap for mainly white tech start ups.

Good article Andy. It always surprises me when people say they’re not responsible for the sins of their fathers yet they have no qualms in continuing to enjoy the fruits of those sins. You said it best Andy, privilege always protects itself.

Points taken. Your post has given a poignant alternative view, although it’s the first critical comment on the initiative I’ve seen. I’d like to believe, too, that our involvement in the digital space has always been underpinned by authenticity rather than opportunist PR gain. From the Guide’s point of view our eye was the ball and not on demographic point scoring. We had a modest budget and needed a critical mass of expert content to establish the platform. As a publisher, you’d appreciate that without the content we’d not have attracted a reasonable audience – and in turn – further resource to pursue the project. The Guide would have failed as several other similar initiatives have. So if we erred, it was on the pragmatic, with a view to establishing a sustainable source of knowledge in the long term.

Not to distract from the very real inequalities in our society I do believe your comments, though, to be unfair to the generosity of the featured founders – of all groups. There are few places on earth, if any, where the proposition to simply give away all you’ve sweated over to learn, without reward, would be acceptable. I still find the selflessness of the contributors to the Guide amazing and a testament to what’s right and unique to South Africans.

Here’s to Phase 2 of the Guide – and any further suggestions anyone might have as to other great SA entrepreneurs we should be featuring.

SHOCKING!!!! Not only are the majority of people white, but the majority are also WHITE MALES!!!!.
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Maybe in part because of AA/BEE (but most probably not) these guys realised if they want more, they have to do something for themselves by themselves with what they have? Perhaps they’re all funded by wealthy white daddies, but I kind of doubt that – since most of the people I’ve met who have wealthy parents tend to be talentless & stupid, because they don’t need to be good at anything other than socialising & spending & they never need to work hard (but we can’t generalise). So congrats to ALL of the featured people for setting an example for all of us who have (realistic) dreams & thanks for sharing their stories.

I was thinking about BEE the other day, in the context of people complaining that its ‘gone on for long enough now’, i.e. about 17 years (although in reality its less). then I calculated the number of years that whites had their own form of economic ’empowerment’ with the apartheid system; i.e. about 46 years (1948-1994), and even thats a poor representation of the extent of baised economic policies, as they started far earlier.
anyway, many people will react badly to this musing, but i feel that those idiots who say things like: ‘blacks have had long enough now to catch up, but look, they havent!’ have just no idea what they’re on about. lets talk in another 30 years, ok?

Doers do, talkers talk. The talkers usually criticize the doers since that is the extent of their contributory capacity. If one can’t create, one destroys and imagines in the process that one might have done much better without ever being held accountable for this view. Pathetic.

Oh Reflect get a grip with your holier than thou sage like wank of an argument above. Our aim at Mahala is to criticise, provoke and interrogate Mzanzi culture… if OM want to play in the public sphere then they open themselves up to be measured and evaluated. There are valid points to be made here and I am totally available to account for my views… but your argument that doers do and talkers talk is such flaccid and misdirected jargon. You’re not engaging you’re just being high and mighty and protecting what I suspect are vested interests. In short, I actually just think you’re an idiot. OM did the Entrepreneur’s Guide. We did the Mahala magazine and I wrote the criticism of the OM guide. We’re all doers here. The real question is can we do things better?

Good article. OM management has in the last few years unsuccessfully defended quite crude and damning racism in the workplace which took a court case to get them to take steps to start to correct. Not really surprised at the lame defensiveness by OM of what is, in the end, a perpetration of a cosy club of privelige

My reservations with your take though are broader: Can big (white in this case) capital honestly broker small entepreneurerial development? I think not. Big capital acting as monopoly through its grip on up and downstream activities, price fixing and the vested interest they parlay with the state squeeze the small operators out of the market. Look it up: we have if not the most, then one of the most monopolised economies in the world. In all this commercial constipation there’s a distinct disincentive for innovation. This is probably why there’s such a lack of transformation in industry. So, no _text book_ free market mechanism down here… and the public suffer price fixing of bread and the highest paper prices in the world being obvious examples. This system is never going investment in potentially esp cultural industries.

So in an economy where the big player-cartels set the rules, play the golf with the ref and own the land where the game is played… Shem… And now we have Walmart

What is to be done? Treat such initiatives with skepticism. Innovative businesses must begin to network. Engineering News has a interesting take and debate on a home grown independent industrial base. Emerging entrepreneuers need to be exposed to an alternative to the money grubbing economy. I guess cultural enterpreneurs have a role to play. Everyone knows the music industry is evil right? So…

Interesting the comments, someone should research the common threads of responses to this kind of debate. Some creepy spam

I think at the heart of inequality in any society lies the deliberate perpetuation of stereotypes. If we’re to move on we need to challenge our thinking and remain open to the possibility of a variation to a theme. Strong opinions are great, but they should be loosely held.

In your comment you’ve provided a near perfect rendition of the corporate stereotype. I’ve read through your lines several times and can confirm you’ve checked every box. Your picture is rather bleak, the orientation rather hopeless.

Andy made a fair point earlier when he said: “if OM want to play in the public sphere then they open themselves up to be measured and evaluated.” Happy with that – an essential part of what we’re about. But ask around first. Find out if the situation warrants hauling out the stereotype, before signaling to your peers that you still have the edge. You’ll find none of us play golf (no offence), or own dark polyester suits. No club down my way either. No “up and downstream activity” going on in the office.

Fuck this social engineering bullshit. I am so sick of the ratios and the representations and the quotas. It is almost worse than apartheid. We are supposed to be working towards a situation where there is no race or gender when it comes to the pursuit of our work and play. Yet we are obsessed with it, we wallow in it and we can’t see past it.

To get to that place you need to abolish the concept of race and gender and help those that need the help. Did the author stop to think that possible the number of white entrepreneurs out ther represents the next wave of social injustice? That wave is all the white kids born into post 1994 SA that are second class citizens and are not able to get bursaries and loans and easy jobs. Their fathers and mothers have made way for the new black elite and the black middle class that currently and in a NON-REPRESENTATIVE manner are employed in our government services and large corporates.

Being an entrepreneur is a life outside of the comforts and security of the formal sector. You don’t go there unless you are REALLY driven or you have to. My guessis that a lot of whites have to so they clog the market, especially in tech.

FFS, can we get over this NAZI classification bullshit and just let people live, achieve and help those who need it?

Very sad this continuation of the Black/White thing! My son has just finished his engineering degree. No bursary, hand outs etc., but certainly a privileged education at a good school. Must he feel guilty about this? Will you only be happy when all the whites that have made the most of their privileged educations have left the country and left it all to the down trodden to create new jobs and pay taxes for this Nirvana when all the whites have left, just like Zimbabwe!

OM sucks big time and they are hung by their own petard because 15 years in and they have not bothered to properly groom up and coming entrepeneurs from the hoods. Lets not forget that ghetto schools remain generally uninspiring, churning out industrial cannon fodder not make it big self starters while the leafy burbs schools line you up for vaaarsitee and making a life for yourself. If the foundation is not right the building will not stand. OM and teh corporates who shuttled their apartheid dosh offshore to protect against nationalisation, while still investing in Zim, should hang heads in shame. This wall of white faces is symptomatic of underlying head up ass syndrome.

This article is a bit of a joke, based on one underlying assumption that plays into the base mentality that drove apartheid, something along the lines of ‘the natives need looking after’.

The embarrassing term ‘window dressing’ belies a preoccupation with appearances over substance. It’s just another example of a fixation on melanin concentrations, rather than simply looking at the fact that a resource has been made available to people of any colour who might wish to use it. I’m not sure if you’ve every had the pleasure (and I invoke this word with considerable irony) of working in a corporate environment Andy, but the corporate idea machine can take a live chicken in at one end and produces a Dali-esque scrotum on the other.

Try get one simple idea you have out there and completed is a momentous task, nevermind trying to address each attribute to address the sensibilities of South Africa’s white liberal minority. The amount of grunt work it must have required to get the corporate sector to produce something like this must have been something to behold.

But back to the original point. The current government has access to around R650 billion of taxpayer funds – mainly taken from the middle class, in which whites are disproportionately represented. How this money is being used should be scrutinised, not the failure of whites to set up initiatives to empower black people. The simplest and most expedient route to empowerment is education, and that ball is in the Government’s court, and I think it’s probably been stolen by now and used to pay for sushi at a whorehouse.

Personally I fork out 20% of my income to direct taxation, with more skimmed off the top for the monthly taxes that actually pay for the facilities I use. I work 10-12 hour days, and that barely keeps my middle class head above water. I imagine many young white South Africans whose contribution to Apartheid was null are in the same position, and don’t really have the time resources to do more – their contribution is to the state budget.

So maybe take your issues to the people in Pretoria who are using race as a cover for their own incompetence and greed, and acknowledge that white South Africans who take the time to devote to the empowerment of their fellow South Africans deserve more than a bit of credit for their intent and efforts – not to be taken to task for their failure to adhere to pay due attention to the way they have packaged their efforts .

Since when did entrepreneurs have to be “groomed”? Some of the biggest and best come from the hood. Branson, Ackerman, Motsepe and the like are not from wealth and priviledge. They used their energy and desire and they made it happen. Entrepreneurs almost never come from the wealthy classes because they have no need to struggle like a mutherfucker for years and years before they might make it. Wealth has no hunger and entrpreneurship is all about drive and hunger.

South Africans have become a bunch of self-entitled pussies expecting government and big business and all sorts of stupid programs and job creation funds to put them in a little office, open their bank accounts, pay their bills and then the lucky recipient can swan around and call themselves entrepreneurs in Range Rovers they can’t afford. Kak man! If all these people are doing everything for you what the hell is the entrepreneur doing? Get off your fucking ass and do it for yourself. Struggle, suffer and get there in the end with something resembling a character instead of the dough you have in your spine right now. Ironically, Old Mutual have done what they really didn’t have to and are getting shot down because their brochure does not represent a demographically perfect picture of sunny South Africa, the rainbow fuckup.

Also getting a bit sick of this whole white = bad thing that we are supposed to reverently acknowledge. Fuck that. Every race has evil and bad shit in their past. Every race, every single one including the black one. Why? Because we are all people and we are all the same. Whities over the past few hundred years did ten thousand tons of good here and a few tons of bad yet it is the tons of bad we all see and harp on about forever more. For every Boeremag dickhead, there are thousands of decent white people that might not dance so good and might not have put their neck on the line to end apartheid but they didn’t vote NAT and have put their skills to work in SA and the results are here to be seen. I want a little recognition for those okes because they were the skills that took this place into the global economy from a pastoral backwater. I want the doctors and nurses that brought their medical skills from Europe and man the hospitals at Bara and teach new generations of all colours their art in med schools to get a shout out. I want the Engineers that designed our buildings, Telkom, MTN and Eskom’s network before it was a basket case, our road networks, our industry and our mines to get a brief mention here. It takes more than freedom fighting to build a nation and we have a proper little nation going here. If only the fuckers in charge would stop cleaning us out and using race to poke open the healing wounds until they are festering sores we would all be ok. Between us all we got our bases covered but if you marginalise a group, you weaken us all.

So let’s all get off our ass and do instead of looking at whether the ratio of the OM guide is correct according to some fucked up eugenic principles in some utopian ideal state that is not SA. Let’s call it as it is. White okes with tech skills came here and had a big fight with black okes and won. Then black okes banded together and beat up the white okes and showed they had different skills. Cool. So now lets get on with it. Racist dicks not invited, NAZI eugenicists not invited, wailing emigrants not invited, corrupt ANC dicks not invited, organised crime not invited. People invited, just people and if all soccer players happen to be black, show them as such and if all entrepreneurs in the tech sector happen to be white, show them as such. I mean, did you want them to lie to make us all feel better about something?

Grant, I love the way you say it like it is! The sooner these bleeters get there act together and stop wingeing, maybe things will get better. Blacks and whites will have to do it together and drop all this animosity. Malema has started the rot in ernest, cant wait for him to see his arse!

@ Grant…Motsepe an entrepreneur??? Being given a whole lot of shares is not entrepreneurship! What about the Maponyas? They are now known for building the Soweto mall, but they were doing business way, way back.

There’s another upsetting thing in this thread – the author, it seems, first flipping out at Reflect’s comment which I took as being aimed at some commentators – not at him (Andy) – in a fit of ‘virtual’ paranoia? And then later threatening people about their IP Addresses? If you write something & people take interest in the topic & participate in the discussion, but don’t necessarily agree with your view – then they must have ‘vested interests’? WTF? Well, don’t worry about my IP Address, because it won’t be rocking up here anymore….. If you don’t want people to comment – then don’t make the option available or moderate the comments so that they agree with YOUR point of view. Cheers dude.

Andy, I agree with your points about white privilege and knowledge being used to perpetuate itself. I disagree that this guide is an example of that.

As a digital entrepreneur myself I found the guide to be an excellent resource of detailed, first hand expertise from successful digital entrepreneurs about how to form a successful start-up that can compete in the local and international environment. If the resource was not so focused it would not be useful to anyone of any race. Putting together a bunch of divergent views from successful businessmen in every singe business field would be useful to nobody. The example you gave of successful black entrepreneurs would be useful if the purpose of the guide was merely to showcase successful people for the sake of encouraging others to make a success of themselves. But the purpose of the guide was as an information resource, and in order for it to be useful that information had to focused. I do not think many of the examples you gave of black entrepreneurs would have done the guide much good, unless the guide was something completely different.

I expect that if I was a black digital entrepreneur I would want the best information available, and I would not care about the colour of the entrepreneurs represented. I think this guide as a fantastic venture to benefit all races within the digital community.

I agree with your sentiment about white South Africans needing to share their privilege, for moral and pragmatic reasons, but I do not think every single venture has to serve that purpose. This venture is A-political, but perhaps it should have been labelled “Guide to Digital Start-ups” or something to that effect, to avoid creating the impression of being an all encompassing guide to entrepreneurs.

Grant W, Gorex, Anonymouse et al – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “Claiming that we’re post-racial and meritocratic when we’re quite obviously still hobbled by the past, is disingenuous.”

It’s very easy for a privileged whitey living in a suburb to say: “Fuck this social engineering bullshit. I am so sick of the ratios and the representations and the quotas. It is almost worse than apartheid.”

Yoni – I said the guide was a good resource – it’s the presentation of the guide and the inability of the creators of this site to find black entrepreneurs to profile that was the major failing…

Andy, we never ever get post-racial by wallowing in guilt and race. It is a fallacy that this will ever come to equilibrium anyway. There will always be the haves and have nots. A bunch of idiots tried to make everyone the same in Cuba, Russia and most of Africa and in every instance they failed miserably and had to kill millions of people along the way. It won’t work and has never worked. Only in South Africa and a few other retarded countries do we have people who openly define themselves as communists. Our commies are not only oblivious to how moronic this is but parade around displaying wealth far in excess of their following and nobody even sees the irony. What a fuckup man!

So the best we can do is make it an even playing field and put in systems to help those OF ANY COLOUR who want to get ahead but were held back FOR ANY REASON. To cherry pick the black okes based on their skin colour and say we are going to tie the hands of the white okes until….well here is the rub. Until when and who decides? At the moment you have black okes making rules that hugely benefit black okes and they are also the okes who get to say when this whole party stops. Do we honestly believe that at some point in 50 years from now, the black okes who made these NAZI fucking rules that mirror the NAZI fucking rules the white Dutch-descended pricks made are going to just turn around and say…ok, we are all equal now so lets drop all these rules and play nicely together…we want a white president now…it is time? Really? Really, really? No, not fucking likely ever and any black oke will tell you that to your face. A few decades in power have shown the black okes to be just as capable of racism and oppression as the white okes before them and in all likelihood when you finally wipe the dinner-party shit out of your brainwashed eyes
we will all be involved in a struggle to win rights from pricks all over again – the endless cycle of history because we just don’t learn. The only positive I can glean from that is that we have finally proved that both races can be absolute cunts, equally and equitably. It has got to count for something.

This struggle has just been fought. It was fought for a NON-RACIAL South Africa which is not what we got. I say it again because people read it and don’t see it. The struggle in South Africa was fought to give equal rights to all South Africans. The first thing the fuckers did when they came to power was take these equal rights away! What the fuck?! What a total con job. And every white oke is so guilt-ridden for some shit that most never did that they accept it and tell each other what dicks they were. Yes, we were dicks, its only right that I give up my job for a black oke. He deserves it, I am a piece of shit. I refuse to be called a dick because of what some poes in a beard on a horse that looked somewhat like me did to some oke in a loincloth 125 years ago. What the hell can I do about that now? Does a Zulu oke wander around and feel like a poes because he fucked up some other okes tribe 150 years ago? Does a black oke wander around and feel like a poes because he came down with the Nguni and destroyed the San and colonised his land? No it is some special fucking condition reserved just for the white okes.

Let me work as an equal citizen and pay my tax and the government can use it to uplift whichever idiot has a gripe but don’t make me sit on the sideline because of the dick on a horse over a century ago. FFS!

So, if you can, in pragmatic terms explain to me how all of this ends equitably based on the current power complex, I will grant you your point but it does not end with happy fucking OM ads that represent the demographic of our tortured little country. If you are honest which quite weirdly OM actually were, it ends with all the skilled okes making an ever increasingly difficult living in an ever increasingly legislated environment supporting 13 million welfare cases that a corrupt and inept ANC created and can’t un-create without losing the vote. So what’s left for these fucking Mugabe worshipping cunts besides keeping their voter happy, keeping him on a diet of gov handouts, buffing up the police force and fuelling the whole thing with race because that is what they have to do to keep the cash flowing and theirfat asses in power. And the dof white okes are cheering them on in a liberal haze that they can’t see through because they feel guilty and when it finally hits them what bullshit the whole thing is, they hop on a plane and never come back and all the black okes cheer and cheer not realising it is one less skilled tax payer in the system whose job will be done by a foreign consultant who will be paid in dollars and spend his money in his own country and fuck the black okes all the way to the bank until the ones who have major power, broker a deal with the foreign oke, who feels fuckall guilt btw, and skims the cash and you get the model that is Africa today – colonised not with the gun but with the dollar and the skill and the vacuum left when the black okes chucked out their countrymen for what their great grandfather knobs did 100 years ago and some NAZI Dutch cunts did 60 years ago. And the black okes think it’s freedom but they have booted the only white okes in the whole wide world that were actually committed to building a nation with them and we wake up on opposite sides of the globe and all we want is to be home without shitty politics and making our country better but we can’t because race ruined everything.

We will always be hobbled by the past if that is where we focus our thinking that dictates our actions today.

My whole point Grant W is that white people exist in a vacuum in SA , a nice bourgeois first world hyper-reality, without acknowledging that we’re the most enabled and educated constituency in the country – and that thanks to history we’ve been on the receiving end of privilege for generations – and therefore the most capable of achieving the sea change required to create a more equitable society. In short whitey needs to get involved. Sitting back, guarding the status quo and pinning your hopes on trickle down capitalist economics is not going to cut it.

Coming back to the OM Entrepreneur’s Guide… it’s still both a product and a representation of that stilted white milieu and a great shame that in a country of 50 million people they could only find two black African entrepreneurs to profile (and 2 coloured and 1 indian) – I mean let’s just get back to that howler… what country do these okes live in? The republics of Parkhurst, Constantia and La Lucia?

Andy, let’s have a piece on the Black Management Forum. And the Black Business Executive Circle. And that directory that only features BBBEEE businesses. And then let’s talk about the National Youth Development Agency and how many entrepreneurs could’ve been sponsored by the squandered millions.

Try running an enterprise and paying people’s salaries while getting asked for your certificate every few weeks, and then try getting paid by those very same companies who are too busy buying BMWs to pay creditors. Do this day in and day out without cushy funding or a trust of some sort to fall back on.

The presumption that most entrepreneurs come from money is misguided and ultimately insulting. It’s precisely BECAUSE most of us come from lower income families that we strive to build our own livelihoods – to simply have a better go at things than our parents did. One could argue that people from wealthy families lack initiative, drive, the need to be something. It’s far easier blowing your parents’ dosh on coke and designer jeans than to actually bother doing anything constructive.

You’re cheapening it all – the professional and personal sacrifices, the sleepless nights, the cloying stench of SARS on your back 24/7, that your certificate doesn’t have the sufficient levels, that bankruptcy looms as you fight to get invoices paid for nine months etc. These are the realities, yet through it all we try be creative, and positive, and try inspire those around us, and try be good citizens – because otherwise we’re fucked, aren’t we?

Same as you Jason… no need to lecture me on the pain and perils of being an entrepreneur. I know that dance. But this article is not about that. It’s about a missed opportunity, a willfully lazy approach, a backslap for the new old white boys club. I agree the BMF and the YDA are just as deserving of our attention – but that doesn’t mean this piece is not a valid criticism

Andy – My dog bru, sounds commie and the worst kind of commie; that silly kind of commie that believes the bullshit spun by the commies in charge that are not commies at all. You are under control, you are the sad little group of Soviet clingers that want communism back, shuffling about on Red Square, huddled against the fresh breath of capitalism that liberated Russia and is making her great once again. You use big words like bourgeois and proletariat and denounce the wealthy as evil grabbers and you strive for equality and grey block buildings where all triumph of the human spirit is squashed by sameness. You are the spirit killer of human beings with your social engineering mindset and your shallow perceptions of racial stereotyping and demographics and NAZI, commie kak like that.

White people do not exist in a vacuum at all. You sound like an ANC propaganda podcast. Yes, white people do have greater wealth and live a better life than many black South Africans. So do millions of black South Africans in 2011. You can check them in the traffic in their big cars, kif suits and those giant watches with 15 buttons to find windspeed on your yacht. What about them? Are they also bourgeois pigs that must be stripped of their wealth or do we accept that they had a tough run so they can be wealthy? Wealthy deserving commies that had a tough time. They are ok. We can live with that capitalism coz its for black okes and they had a tough time. How did white okes get these supposed historical priviledges that they just took for themselves, thieving nasty people that we are? Where did this wealth come from? In fact what the fuck is wealth, Andy? What is wealth? Wealth is having the skill to aquire and manage assets. Always has been. You take a banker, a farmer, a doctor, an engineer and you strip all of them of wealth and give it all to an uneducated rural oke. In a short time they will be wealthy again using nothing but what is in their head and the rural oke will be broke with some hectic good memories. The national lottery shows this in technicolour in every country on the planet. Okes with drive and skill can aquire and manage wealth. Okes with drive and no skill have a small chance but okes with no drive and no skill are fucked up and will never be wealthy even if it is given to them because wealth is actually in the head.

Now how did okes end up with skill or no skill in the modern industrialised economy Andy? Where did the skills come from? They came in from Europe in the heads of the white okes. Is that hard to stomach for black okes? Maybe, and I get that, but it is the honest goddammed truth. The white wealth in South Africa came here in the heads of the millions of European immigrants who then built the industries and mines and farms that constitute the assets under their kin’s control today. Who the hell was supposed to be the boss in that little interaction? The okes who knew cattle herding or the okes who knew how to engineer a power pylon? Who was naturally going to be boss and who was going to be the labour? Guns, germs and steel bru…not bourgeois plots by white fat imperialists. Once that relationship had formed, the rest is history. It is nobody’s fault, nobody was evil, the gradient in skills was just too steep. It was a tsunami, a step change in skills washed over SA and the local black okes were not prepared and could not fight it. Shit happens, people move, do business. It is all changing now and new skills are coming through but this crap that whites came here and stole the black okes stuff is bullshit. Nothing was stolen. It was bought of fought for. And if any black oke says that to come here and fight for it was a kak thing to do then he should explain why all the black okes here were fighting for stuff too. This image of the black okes all sitting peacefully in harmony here in SA until the white oke arrived is ANC propaganda African kak. The Zulus fought the Sothos and the Xhosas were raiding and Shaka was impaling and Mzilikazi was butchering and the San got fucked so hard up the arse that they have never recovered and the fucking was done by those peaceful harmonius black folk in the meadows that never actually existed. So if the way was to fight for your spot of land here then what exactly did the white okes steal? We came, we fought, we won and we set up Woolworths, roads and MTN. They, as if anything has changed, the black okes checked this out, they fought, they rioted, they bombed our asses and they won. Except they only kinda won because we agreed to stop and share things out. Better for both sides and both sides signed up. So who stole what from who exactly? So now we are supposed to have a truce where instead of fighting, it is a fair place for all but the black okes suddenly want to steal all sorts of shit that they never had before and say that they are taking it back? What the fuck is that all about?

Speaking of history, you claim that whites have been on the receiving end of privilege for generations as if this is such a bad thing. Of course we have…our ancestors brought the skills to the table and passed them on to their kids. Black okes had the opportunity to learn from white okes and so the whole thing eventually ended up in a fight because the black okes came of age. They graduated and they too now had skills. But that gap is still not closed but it is not the fault of the colonial imperial cunty white okes. If those Dutch super-pricks in 1948 had been more progressive thinking we could be in a better position but at the end of the day the reason black okes are behind the curve in skills has less to do with apartheid education and far more to do with the fact that their toppies were cow herders. I don’t expect the Oppenheimers to teach me about the diamond business. That is not my right. Why should any family teach anyone about their business from which they survive? Watch the new generation of black kids whose parents are educated professionals. They are going to shine. Good for them. They got skills so they will have wealth and assets AND more importantly, they will be capable of managing those assets. Look what happens when an asset like a farm is given to an oke who can’t manage the asset. He destroys the asset quick, quick.

So, back to OM, you think they are dicks for showing too many white okes even though that is the truth? They show things how they are and you kick them in the balls because they didn’t use some faked out stock photo of grinning black and white people in the perfect ratios? Fuck that shit man, honestly, fuck it hard to hell where it belongs. Fake smiley cunts that lie off the page worse than any SAB ad. OM created art; they bravely told the story that everybody knows but nobody says. For this we must tell them they did a kak job because they did not lie to protect our sensitive little SA commie eugenic engineering sensibilities?

Grant you’re such a reactionary. You can’t just write me off as a commie and then go back to calling my views NAZI… I am neither. The fact that I do not believe advanced capitalism is a fully developed financial system (as evidenced by the ongoing global financial crisis and impending double dip recession) does not immediately label me a commie. I’m a bit more Trotskyist in my thinking anyway… the point is there’s complexity at play here which you seem keen to negate and deny. And you’re definitely fighting any suggestion of culpability or responsibility for the state of South Africa… Finally, you seem to think there are no black entrepreneurs out there and that I’m arguing for OM to use stock images etc. to window dress this initiative. That’s a joke. Throughout my piece and these comments I have suggested a number of black entrepreneurs worthy of a profile in the guide. Real talented entrepreneurs and businessmen who exist in South Africa right now. But you’re still defending the little whiteboy’s club of internet entrepreneurs and their friends who made this guide…

Not denying there are black entrepreneurs out there (where you see me denying that bru?) and anyway there are black entrepreneurs are on the cover of the thing. You just had issue with the NUMBERS not being demographic which is why I labelled not you but the standard thinking that you apply to this as NAZI eugenic in nature…because it is…just without the death camps. You are a racial profiler, a censor of skin colour, picking through documents looking for your quotas. The oke from OM said that he tried and failed to get more of the darker dudes on the cover and I believe him because everyone is so colour fucked in the head and he knew it would be a fuckup and it was. Jacked black okes are too busy raking cash to be sitting talking shit like you and I. No wonder all the okes in the brochure are white…they had the time and the interest. Black okes are out making loot, they don’t need OM’s help.

Capitalism is simply another word for brutal efficiency and the ability of anyone to be anything. Like anything else it needs rules and regulations. The capitalist system did not fail. The capitalist system did not cause the crisis. Some unsupervised cunts that gave loans to the okes who can’t handle assets and will never be wealthy that I mentioned previously caused the crisis. In other words, the moment the capitalist system tried to be socialist and help the poor (although at a micro level, personal greed was the motive for sure) it fucked out. That’s right, when the cappies went commie and gave the worker some management responsibility, the system fucked out…big fucking surprise there. The capitalist system combines the beauty of human freedom with the evolutionary efficiency of tough competition. Remove that and you have bread queues, fucked up grey block buildings and prisons full of intellectuals just like you. Every time. Every fuckin time. Anyone who thinks the capitalist system failed us lately better come up with something better and they won’t because it is the only system that works. All that is needed is the rules of engagement need tweaking and enforcing.

Anyway, even dumb fucks know that the better your capitalist system, the better the regulatory environment and the more educated your population, the more the competition, the lower the prices, the better the products and the poorer the capitalists. If you want to reign them in make rules. If you want cleaner environment tell capitalists you will tax them more for being grubby. If you want no financial crisis, you tie banker’s salaries into the investments they make. Just tweak the rules. So I hear you that you are not a fan of Capitalism but I can infer that you can’t propose a better system so you label yourself Trotskyist and align yourself with one of history’s biggest fuckers of all people. Nice one. That poes has serious blood on his hands and was personally responsible for all sorts of shit that no human being should ever have to go through. Permanent revolution. Sounds like the fucking youth league except with intellect and the balls to go through with it! Trotsky was a poes. He put workers in charge of the biggest country on the planet and fucked it up so bad that it is still recovering. He was so far up his own arse he forgot one key thing…workers don’t know how to manage so when you put them in charge things either go to shit or one of them has to become a manager/leader and is therefore no longer a worker. Oh, and the skills one needs to be a manager are less available than those to be a worker so managers are scarce and therefore command higher remuneration. In capitalism that gets paid in cash, in commie countries that gets paid in favours. Take your pick. Same thing. The insects need a queen.

The complexity you refer to is a smoke-screen to obstruct the simple issues at play here. It is the narrative of the new overlords, sung loud and often to bring the herd into alignment. There is no complexity, only a bunch of okes who came to power saying one thing and then did exactly what the okes they deposed did…used race to control their agenda. Simple, not complex. Their greatest achievement has been to make Trotskyists like you, commies and workers believe that they are still actually trying to create a free and fair, non-racial country for all of us. That little magic trick is complex. The rest is simple. If you get equity and a non-racial foundation, all the rest can be done fairly and equitably and according to priciples you can stand up for and fight for instead of this social engineering bullshit we all accept with our meek caps off our bowed heads. Even the dicks in the DA know that.

And I work for myself…I am one of those roughly white in colour entrepreneurs with a mongrel blood line (for your genetic category manual) that sits in endless queues and pays tax to cunts who wear big watches and do fuckall. I don’t work for OM and I don’t give them any of my money, I think they are a bunch of fee grabbing investment NAZI’s that can take a person that saves all their lives and turn them into a pennyless old goat by taking a small percentage of the portfolio that is actually a huge percentage of the growth thereby negating most if not all gains when you factor inflation into the picture. Rogues and scallywags, OM, Liberty and the rest of them. I look after my own assets because I am lucky enough to have the skills because my parents (not the apartheid regime) taught them to me and the rest I figuredout for myself. Since you asked and seem to want to know more about me…I don’t like borders, all religions, commies, Western invasions, dictators, political leaders, political correctness or social engineering but I especially don’t like people who don’t think for themselves and hamstring the rest of us by being fucken morons open to exploitation by various nefarious fucks. I like gypsies, jews, blacks, sex, magic, music, freedom, vice, fairness, fucking, love, lust, licking, listening, mountains, water, expression, paint, tales, life and accounting. Now that we know each other better, I can tell you I have no agenda here and I represent no company here. In fact, can you think of a company that would have me as their spokesperson?

Oh, and by the way, no little white boys have clubs any more. All the black okes do though and nobody seems to think that is fucked up. “Black Managers Forum” – blacks only! “Black Lawyers…” – blacks only! That’s ok because they had a tough time.It’s ok to be a racist cunt when you had a tough time unless you were a white oke who had a tough time. That’s not allowed. Noooo. Why not call it “Society for the development of Black Managers” and invite both races to mingle and network and pass skills back and forth? Noooo, fuck that, its revenge time brothers. The little clubs you should be watching closely are the ones growing from the new elite and not the ones hanging onto survival because they are racially prejudiced.

No ways Grant… the complexity of the issue is such: you’re right and you’re wrong, Yes it would be lovely to get beyond race in this country. No, it’s not going to happen because black people are fucken upset with their situation and by and large still impoverished while white people are continuously advantaged, insular and increasingly belligerent about it. At least the black elite have an idea of where they have come from. Whiteys, mainly, just protect their interests and when the going gets tough threaten to bugger off to Australia with their assets. Only willing to engage with the concept of “a better life for all” on the capitalist trickle down level and by employing gardeners, maids and tipping the car guard.

Black entrepreneurs are not too busy making loot to be interviewed. That comment, at the very least is fatuous. Others might read more into it. End of the day, this guide represents a specific milieu. White capital entrepreneurs. It’s a segment of our country. All I’m arguing for is a more complete picture please. This country is full of fucking amazing entrepreneurial success stories – and here we are arguing about how fucked up it is. If the guide had actually managed to capture that inspiration – we would not be having this argument.

These OM fuckers didn’t try hard enough to find any inspirational black entrepreneurs to interview so they just pimped out the profiles to their extended network of “go-getters”. Backslap tjom. Hupstootjies.

Until there is an effort to at least level the playing field and include everyone and then start to deal with the structural inequalities of this society – all the important debates will invariable default back to race and class – the colour coded frontline.

Race doesn’t disappear because white south africa thinks it’s time for everyone to move on now.

You’ve openly aligned yourself with communism, and I guess the rational person would attempt to stop communicating with you right there, because communism is above all the failure to apprehend reality. Nevertheless, I’m happy that Grant has been given the opportunity to say what he’s said so eloquently.

You keep talking about trickle down economics – acknowledge what I said: R560 billion in tax revenues that could have been used to create skills and has been used to create a welfare state/con job. Get a grip man. The white population is not responsible for the black population, and if they disappeared with their maid and gardener salaries and car guard tips, you’d just dump millions more into abject poverty.

And your notion of white South Africans is, quite frankly, insulting, patronising, and probably based on your own experience of being privileged.

Here’s a story:
Matriculated
Dropped out of university because it was too expensive and nobody would sign surety on a student loan
Parents went bankrupt
Was broke
Got a job in a scaly bar serving drinks to drunk cunts
Lost the job
Survived on R10 a day from doing odd jobs
Was invited to take a psychometric test at a major global corporation for a management intership position, was one of about 15 people who passed the test that year, was refused a spot because the quota for whites had already been met. My position was given to a coloured girl who failed the test.
Got another job at an outbound call center doing cold calling
Worked for long enough to get a loan to go to London
Went to London
Worked as a barman – 12 hour shifts 6 days a week
Came back home, studied
Got a job by offering my skills at the cheapest possible price
Built a small business

I’m now one of those white cunts who employs two black people – one as a gardener and one as a maid. When I have time I do volunteer work with immigrants – because they could actually be bothered to take responsibility for their own lives and not blame their predicaments on the past (despite coming from vastly more atrocious circumstances than our own population).

Boy, didn’t I feel the warm glow of white privilege while that was going on. I haven’t stolen anyone’s land, my parents never bailed me out, no white buddies privilege club helped me out. I just worked, believing that if you put one foot in front of the other day after day you’ll eventually leave behind the shit situation you’re in.

I’m pretty sure I am not alone. So maybe you’re just projecting your experience of white privilege onto the white population at large.

Andy, peace, love nooo violence. I am off to have a weekend coz I am fucked from my week of slog. Been good to chat. I leave you with one thought. Maybe the black okes need the white okes to stop being such pussies before both sides can respect each other again. At the moment, if I was a black oke and I had these fucken simpering dimwits bending over forwards for me at every turn and trying like so hard to fit in and be all African and ethno-bongo and shit, I would think they are a bunch of moronic cunts with no spine and less brain.

So here is how it is going to be from now: I am a white oke by your definition although I prefer to think of myself as an organism of the big bang. I have never fucked over a black oke because he is black and I expect to be treated likewise or else I will stand up for my space and my rights. I am not a second class citizwen, I fucken did my bit here and so did my people. I am currently living in a racially oppressive system run by a bunch of two-faced bastards that lie and cheat and steal and used race to get what they want and use it still to cling to power. They had the unique chance to lift the people of this country above race but they sold their souls to the fucken darkness and the abused became the abuser and the abuse is getting worse not better and it is getting worse every week. I have no white guilt. I don’t agree with apartheid. It was a fascist system which even the English whites felt the sting of and I am so glad it has been dismantled. I did not construct apartheid and I did not uphold it. I was born into it. That does not mean I buy this fucken bullshit about theft and colonial evil and imperial whatever. That is propaganda fabricated to condone the wholesale stripping of assets from white okes to the new black elite. I am proud of the good my ancestors did here and what they built with their funky Euro skilz. I am proud of their commitment to this place. I am proud that they prevailed when they had to and then I am glad that they buried the hatchet when the black okes stood up for themselves. I will help any South African who needs my help if I can. I will not discriminate. I will not live my life guilty. I do not understand the way that black South Africa blames all their shit on apartheid and white okes. Grow a pair of balls and make your shit right. Be proud black man, be proud. Educate your people, look after your sick and for fuck sake stop ripping off all of our people with your filthy grabbing from the government tills. Be proud and stand tall. You have done great things and great things can come but you have to stop being the fucken victims and stand up. Stop whinging about how tough you have had it because you have never had it better than right here right now. The Afrikaans fuckers had it tough as nails before they came to power. They lost 25% of their people in concentration camps to those British dicks and they had their farms burned and they starved and they got shot and they fucken died for this country. You do not have a monopoly on suffering here or blood spilled here, you do not own this country. You came from the north just as we did. You are colonials too, we all are except the poor San that we both fucked up so bad they are a broken spent people. You black okes have the power right now, you have a job market that wants your skills you have millions of deluded white cunts that think they owe you the shirt off their back because some dick in a beard beat your great grandfather on the battlefield. What the hell have you got to be unhappy about? If you need quicker progress kick the ANC in the arse and stop fawning over total rectums like Malema. He is a cunt of royal proportions and he will fuck you harder and longer than any white oke ever has in your living memeory.

I love all South Africans from the toothless fuckers fishing in Hout Baai to the mamas in KZN to the big hat, smiling chops at the Kaiser Chiefs Pirates derby to the East Rand dutchman that fucks his poppie and goes to church on Sunday. You weaken one you weaken all. We are South Africans and we are damaged but don’t fuck with us. We have been through some serious shit and we will fuck you up!

Have a superb weekend and be proud all you mighty fucken South African beauts!

Ha ha Encore… how is it that I am beaten? You’re the dude commenting anonymously on a billboard in the middle of the night. And you don’t seem to understand the difference between communism, socialism and social democracy… spend some time on Wikipedia and come back and try have this conversation again… Oh and instead of thinking about what you’re going to say, try and understand what I am saying so we can have a proper debate.

[…] * South African culture blog, Mahala.com has two must-read posts about what’s considered normal in South Africa: white writing (what’s out for our longer post on Monday on this) and white insurance. […]

Andy, bringing a banana to a gunfight is one thing, shooting yourself in the foot with it is something else entirely. So what if I post something on a Friday night – are all the ‘cool’ people out having their anuses bleached before a night out at Assembly. Fuck that, these issues are important, and speaking logic to people incapable of such is more important than finding several new substances that can scorch my septum and dancing to kak wannabe Brit/American music. Socialism, social democracies and communism are all collectivist ideologies – it’s just a matter of scale and intensity of adherence to Marxist doctrine. Now that we’ve cleared that up, why don’t you just answer me about why white people are more accountable for black suffering than a goverment that misappropriates several hundred billion rand a year. And yes I comment anonymously, because I am talking to, and in front of, people with the mindset that those who oppose their views should be silenced – see your trite little IP rant.

It seems to me increasingly, that the identity of the vagina has been consumed by the meta-discourse of overarching imaginary simulacra. If such a vagina cannot sustain its discursive dimensions that through entry of the penile cavity, it will nevertheless show itself to have revealed the essential penilic structure of an inversion, twice removed and displaced through the calculus of such a gesture. In other words, the penis is the vagina, the vagina is the penis. How we deal with this knowledge is tantamount to understanding the “Wall of Whiteness”, for how can the privileging of the colonial binarism mach one construct itself it not through the gendered hierachy, the tu, no, the jous of its own self-dilapidating mechanisms of animositizing. What we need are vaginal penises and penile vaginas. The yin/yang of cock and balls mixed with the lack represented by the flapping labia. Not the theatre.

hola! interestingly, the url for their site could be read: dog eat things…

anyway. I’d say: good call Andy! I would think Old Mut would not add black faces to be correct with the times… but because there are people of colour out there rocking. Thanks for putting your list together… I totally agree on some of those names. I sent this article on to a friend of mine at Old Mutual…

@GrantW “The capitalist system did not cause the crisis. Some unsupervised cunts that gave loans to the okes who can’t handle assets and will never be wealthy that I mentioned previously caused the crisis”……Eish boet do your homework, the crisis had more to do with misrepresented, overvalued stock than ‘loans’. The financial crisis had fuckall to do with the masses ‘that can’t handle assets”….nothing at all. As far as I’m concerned they handled their assests fine. Most had juicy 401k’s (retirement packages) that were decimated by financial corporations selling them worthless stock, even the so called rich folk. #damnhommieyoustilldontknowwhatitsabout?!

Earn your stripes black boys and girls. And stop trying to get the settlers to pin their stripes to your undeserving BEE arms.
So sick of politically correct bullshit. Let us try and balance previous disadvantaged with respect for success measured not by color of their skin.

Hired cause you black. Fired cause you useless.
To all the true and thoroughbred black guys and girls out there. Respect.